For a long time, I was plagued with constant headaches. They weren’t as painful as migraines, but they occurred every day, all day. I tried everything to cure them. That included banging my head against the wall and popping tylenol capsules like tic-tacs. Unfortunately, nothing worked!

After speaking to a few friends who had the same headaches, stress levels and hectic schedule I did, I came to the realization that these headaches were simply a symptom of our busy lifestyles. Stress is the number one cause of these types of headaches. I finally found a cure, and it didn’t come in the form of a pill.

Put simply, I had to learn how to “chill.” Here is a few things I did to rid myself of this problem:

Stop taking pills and start drinking more water. For all those people taking pain relievers and chasing them down with massive amounts of coffee (you know who you are!), stop! Tylenol doesn’t help and caffeine can actually spur on these types of headaches.

Go Rag Doll at least 3 times a day. This works! At least 3 times a day, you need to find a quiet place, completely relax your body, take deep breathes and work on clearing your mind. Do this for no less than 5 minutes. When I say rag doll, I really mean it. After doing this enough, you’ll learn how to relax every muscle in your body, which can relieve headaches, stress and anxiety. When you become “stressed”, a process in your body referred to as a “cascade of cortisols” begins. This process basically puts your body into a flight or flee mode thereby creating anxiety. The rag doll exercise relieves this.

Workout! Whether it be calisthenics in your living room or a brief jog down the street. Physical exercise is crucial to living a healthy lifestyle and it will help relieve that nasty tension causing those headaches.

Make sure the A/C is working. A warm work environment doesn’t help and can actually be counter productive.

Most importantly, take a step back. Whenever I got a headache, my first instinct was to power through it and continue working. Just ignore the pain. Right?? Wrong! Your productivity falls more than you think. These headaches are your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. Your body is saying “Hello?! Are you there? I need attention and if I don’t get it, I’m gonna kick your ass!” So try to lighten your workload and spend a little more time on you. Don’t worry, the work isn’t going anywhere!

These are the steps I took to decrease my anxiety and headaches, and I’m confident they can help you. These are things I learned from personal experience, not from google searches. There are no magic pills or quick cures.

I’d love to hear some of your remedies as well. Feel free to send them to me and I will post them for the rest of the readers!